In the temple, underneath the throne of the High Priest, Karal felt a symbol of interlocking squares, with great lines in the shape of flames passing through and around them, etched and painted into the surface of the floor.
Without warning, he felt himself shoved back, the heavy gold throne collapsing onto his chest, the hot breath of a man or demon – he didn't know – filling him with terror.
"I've got him, Brother," Solaris said in his mind. Hold a focus. Let me in.
Karal pushed himself onto his knees, and sat with his hands palms up, what Ulrich had taught him was a receptive pose. "It lets anyone who is of the hand-taking sort come up and take your hand," he said. And Karal gathered demons were not the hand-taking sort, though even as he sat there, something stabbed into his leg, and something – debris flying, from where he didn't know – slammed into his head.
He focused on sitting at home in his own time in the temple, in the meditative pose, and feeling Ulrich take his hand. He thought of Solaris – her beauty, her mesmerizing thoughtfulness – and Natalie. And he felt the touch in his hand and his mind at the same time.
"Stay with me, Sister," he said. He could hear the voices of the Heralds and the Valdemaran soldiers, the sounds of men screaming, the crashes of trees felled by magic, the warmth of the temple, which he feared had been set on fire.
"It will take a while, Karal. Can you hold it open wider? Just a little longer. It took them centuries to build it – it will take – I don't know how long to heal the wound."
He was kneeling like this when Tylendel burst into the temple, two priests following hard on his heels. He was unable to see what was happening or to move.
"You!" Tylendel cried. Karal turned his head.
"You can't be distracted!" Solaris reminded him. "Keep the channel wide."
He turned his face back to face the throne and its etched symbols.
Around him, he heard a cacophony of spells, the priests chanting, a tingling, the roar of a demon. Maybe more than one.
And he could hear the hooves of Tylendel's companion, and someone shouting in the Valdemaran tongue.
Meanwhile, he knew from the Daughter of the Sun that the seven centuries of damage was a third of the way healed, just in this short time, by the power channeled through her and him from Vkandis, since the Sun god could not directly bear exposure to the disease.
"Reach out and feel the etchings on the floor," Solaris said. Can you feel where the flames are now?"
Karal touched the floor and felt that the depictions of flames covering the overlapping box-etchings had receded, leaving some of the boxes less engulfed, some even close to whole.
"The overlapping boxes are the different peoples and cultures of Karse," Solaris said. "When the flames have receded, the destruction that has been perpetrated on them will be undone."
Arvin, the High Priest of the Demon-Wielders of Karse, noticed that someone was blocking his latest work – a three headed dragon capable of decimating a village in minutes – from entering his Gate. "Traitor," he said, lifting the throne from where it had fallen on the floor, and bashing it into the man kneeling beside it. Karal crumpled flat on the floor, and a second later, Arvin burst into flames. Solaris had to leave the channel, which had closed without Karal's will, and the remainder of the healing had yet to be done.
